Rising fascism in the US

From the preceding post:

It would be fairer to say RT tried to influence its viewers by airing coverage consistently critical of the American democratic system and process in general—and unfortunately for US intelligence agencies—there is no crime in that.
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Yet...

Don't try to criticize the Russian "democracy" on RT though...

I’m astonished at this news.

Looks like France is throwing elbows at the US, aspiring to worst policy toward ‘minorities.’

Get a load of this: France wants to change wording in religious books.
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Excerpt:

YOU THINK LIFE is bad for Muslims in Trump’s America? Spare a thought for the Muslims of France.

Over the past few years, they have been collectively blamed, and punished, for a series of horrific terror attacks carried out in France by so-called jihadists. The latest, a knife attack in Paris by a man shouting “Allahu akbar,” killed one person and injured four others last weekend.

While anti-Muslim bigotry has become a hallmark of the Republican right in America, in France it is a truly bipartisan affair. Islamophobia is peddled by the left and right alike, with both socialists and conservatives falling over one another to defend French secularism, or laïcité, by demonizing French Muslims.

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Consider: Successive French governments have criminalized the face veil and banned the headscarf in schools. French mayors have targeted Muslim women who want to cover up at the beach and Muslim school kids who try to have a pork-free lunch. The French president — and new liberal heartthrob — Emmanuel Macron has introduced draconian counterterror legislation that United Nations human rights experts have warned could have a discriminatory impact on Muslims in particular.

And the latest big idea? To go after the Quran. On April 21, the newspaper Le Parisien published a manifesto “against the new anti-Semitism,” signed by 300 public figures — ranging from former President Nicolas Sarkozy and former Prime Minister Manuel Valls, to actor Gérard Depardieu and singer Charles Aznavour. According to The Atlantic, the manifesto states that “11 Jews have been assassinated — and some tortured — by radical Islamists” in France, and demands that “the verses of the Quran calling for murder and punishment of Jews, Christians, and nonbelievers be struck to obsolescence by religious authorities,” so that “no believer can refer to a sacred text to commit a crime.”

Such rhetoric is a reflection both of Gallic bigotry and sheer stupidity, a toxic combination of ignorance and privilege.

First, where are these Muslim “religious authorities” who would be willing to do to the Quran what Thomas Jefferson did to the Bible? Establishment-friendly French imams, such as Dalil Boubakeur, rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, and Tareq Oubrou, imam of Bordeaux’s Grand Mosque, have denounced the manifesto as “unbelievable and unfair” and “nearly blasphemous.” And were such mainstream figures to even agree to edit the Quran — believed by Muslims to be the literal word of God! — does anyone really believe that the fanatics of the Islamic State or Al Qaeda would give a damn?

Second, violent extremism isn’t a product of scripture. Contrary to conventional wisdom, and as I have argued in the past while citing a raft of studies and experts, religious faith “isn’t a crucial factor” in terror attacks — or in the process of so-called radicalization. Why, then, obsess over Quranic verses? As the French journalist Didier Francois, who was held hostage by ISIS in Syria, told CNN in 2015: “There was never really discussion about texts or — it was not a religious discussion. It was a political discussion. … Because it has nothing to do with the Quran.” Or, as his fellow former French hostage, Nicolas Henin, has said, “I noticed that these jihadists have little to do with … Arab or Muslim culture — they are children of our societies. … They are products of our culture, our world.”

Who do you take more seriously? Two former ISIS hostages? Or the guy from “Green Card“?

Third, how can the manifesto signatories be so sure that it is French Muslims who are behind the rise of this “new anti-Semitism”? As a 2016 study of anti-Semitic hate crimes in France by Human Rights First noted, “Perpetrators of most antisemitic violence are perceived to be of ‘Muslim culture or origin’ … although there is no data to substantiate this conclusion—in part because of the prohibition in France on collecting ‘ethnic’ statistics.” Yet in next-door Germany, where such statistics are collected by the police, nine out of 10 anti-Semitic hate crimes in 2017 were carried out not by radicalized Muslims, but by “members of far-right or neo-Nazi groups.”

FOURTH, WHAT EVIDENCE is there that the Quran itself is anti-Semitic? Or that Islam has a particular problem with Jews? Critics often point to verses of the Muslim holy book that express hostility towards Jews, while ignoring the specific historical and theological context for such verses, and also ignoring those many other Quranic verses which heap praise on Jewish people.

As the Princeton University historian Mark Cohen, an expert on Jewish-Muslim relations, points out: “Islam contains a nucleus of pluralism that gave the Jews in Muslim lands greater security than Jews had in Christian Europe,” and therefore, “Jews in the Islamic orbit were spared the damaging stigma of ‘otherness’ and anti-Semitism suffered by Jews in Europe.” Modern-day Muslim and Arab anti-Semitism is a consequence of colonialism, conflicting nationalisms, and the clash with Zionism, argues Cohen, and is neither “indigenous” to the Middle East, nor “inherent” in Islam.

Fifth, why single out Islamic scripture in this way? Why not Jewish or Christian scripture, too? Are we supposed to pretend that the Old Testament of the Bible doesn’t contain scores of verses that incite violence and hatred against nonbelievers? Or, that those verses haven’t been used to justify heinous crimes in recent years? Against Palestinians, Iraqis, Ugandans, Norwegian kids, and American abortion clinics, among others?

To avoid the charge of hypocrisy, therefore, will the signatories to this manifesto, who include France’s chief rabbi Haim Korsia, also call for verses of the Bible to be “struck to obsolescence by religious authorities”?

Sixth, whatever happened to the “liberté” part of “liberté, égalité, fraternité“? How is the insistence on removing verses from the Quran compatible with religious freedom (a crucial, if less discussed, part of the French secular tradition)? How is it compatible with freedom of speech or expression? Whatever happened to the land of “Je Suis Charlie“? Well, guess what? The manifesto was drafted by, of all people, Philippe Val, the former managing editor of Charlie Hebdo. Irony, it seems, may have died a quiet death in France.
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https://theintercept.com/2018/05/16/anti-muslim-movement-has-new-rallying-cry-lets-delete-verses-of-the-quran/

European Jews have deleted anti-christian buts in the talmud during the middle ages, and the Catholic Church has recently come to terms with the antisemitism inherent to certain Gospels, so it can be done...

Whether rabbis should throw stones when living in a glasshouse*, i don't know.

* There are many racist passages in the torah and talmud. And these are in current use in Israel -- see the "King's Torah" controversy.

There's all the difference in the world between adherents of a religion deciding to alter their so-called holy books, and the state outlawing passages.

This is the French president claiming his intention to edit the Koran.

Full disclosure: I despise those hateful passages and decried them many times in these pages, but I don't support them being edited, just openly discussed and called out for what they are: incitement to violence.

I haven't heard anything about this, but if you are right, I definitely agree. That kind of a thing should be a taboo to even consider. But the French have a few controversial things like this in recent years. Didn't at one time Muslim women were not allowed to wear the Burkini?

I doubt very much you understand the context. Many hateful passages/fatwas were in response to circumstances and have been deliberately misinterpreted by fundamentalist imams to justify criminal acts.

There's one fatwa which is often touted excusing the killing of civilians. This has been used by extremists on both sides to justify terrorism or vilify Islam. On first reading it would seem that was the case, but the truth is far less clear cut. This fatwa dates from the Mongol invasion where Muslim civilians were strapped to siege towers by the Mongols, in effect making them human shields. Said hateful fatwa stated that in those circumstances it was alright to fire on the siege towers because the alternative would be annihilation.

Context is everything.

The current state of Twitter: they are practicing open censorship against progressives. We are being banned for arguing with establishment Democrats. We've been screensaving the tweets that get us banned, just to ensure we're not afield of TOS.

Most of the best voices in progressive politics are being banned or shadow banned -- meaning that their tweets are not being disseminated as usual to people who follow them. We are currently checking in with each other on our timelines to see how many tweets we've missed.

This type of censorship may seem silly to most of you now. Especially short-sighted people who can't imagine this happening to them or people with their political views, but rational people will understand that if this is ok in this country against one group, no one is safe.

When my account was frozen, Twitter lied about it. My account was "behaving suspiciously", they said. "Prove you're a person", they said. I followed the procedure they requested. They, like everyone else in this country, tried to allege I was Russian to censor me.

After I proved who I was, they said "sometimes it takes a few weeks to restore accounts. Sometimes, it takes longer..."

This is happening to a lot of people calling bullshit on the two party system and the establishment narrative.

Just a warning to those who are watching the world climate. This is a draconian free speech clampdown in plain view.

Julian Assange has been cut off from the world for about a month now. Just FYI.

If I'm not mistaken, there are French laws against forms of face coverings seemingly designed for Muslims.

You seem to be focused on how non-Muslims can 'misinterpret' the intent of these passages; I've seen many documentaries and videos throughout the years of Imams delivering these lines to incite violence.

They are used by both camps toward violent purposes.

Did you read my post?

Errr... no! Macron has nothing to see with it. This is just a bunch of private folks publishing an open letter in newspaper Le Parisien, like Terry Jones burning a Qoran, although less extreme.

I know just a bit of French, but from what source did you get that?

I think that they've got the loi de séparation des Églises et de l'État, so Macron, as président de la République française would act against the law and constitution.

I lifted this quote from the article above:

“Emmanuel Macron has introduced draconian counterterror legislation that United Nations human rights experts have warned could have a discriminatory impact on Muslims in particular.

And the latest big idea? To go after the Quran. On April 21, the newspaper Le Parisien published a manifesto...”

As usual, there's a certain level of stupidity and misinformation in those critiques coming from far far away, as if it was de rigueur for US and British journalists to turn off their brains and lower their professional standards as soon as they start speaking of France.

The rest of your article clearly states that this manifesto is published by people having nothing to see with Macron.

Is it mandatory for you Americans to behave as total fools when speaking of France?

It's an open letter, and just because "un ancien président de la République, trois anciens Premiers ministres, des élus, des intellectuels, des artistes…" are among the 250 persons who signed that letter, Macron isn't among them.

I noticed he wasn't a signatory, and older statements seemed to put him apart from this aggression against Muslims, but recent articles allude to a weakening of his resolve not to join the voices for a clampdown on Muslims' autonomy.

Don't misinterpret my comments as an attack on Macron. I'm just watching and commenting on events. I'm not invested in any anti-Macron sentiment.

Which is why I said, if true. I do know that Burkini thing happened, but it is now struck down. I am not dissing the French, I mean look at us. We are practically tearing our country apart.

It's so funny how thin-skinned most Europeans are under even the mildest criticism of your country.

Try not to fret too much.